"At the end of the day, don’t get stuck on numbers."
Numbers or understanding/developing calculations can help a person be more efficient. It is all really just patterns of interactions. They are numerous so they become inconvenient to predict, unless someone at some point puts them all together and comes up with a formula/algorithm/something that will take all of them into consideration. Until then, if it has not happened yet, we will be sticking planks on the walls and guess where they should be. And then repeat and repeat and repeat until we get the right combination. It may be fun as a hobby but it is very inefficient if someone’s goal is getting the result and not attempting to get the result. Of course, experience may shorten the experimentation, if that is one’s life calling. For those who do not have that much time, nice calculations would be way more useful.
Other fields have gone quite far with such a mathematical approach. I am not sure that room tuning is that high on this civilization’s list of priorities so maybe that is why the current approach seems to be still 15th century.
Having said that, I wrote it yesterday on another thread but it seems to be more suitable here, I just met a person who studied at the college for which Michael Green did some work on a music hall (or something in that sense). It was mentioned ad nauseam earlier in this thread.
Be it what it is, this person, completely unbiased and not particularly interested in anything regarding audiophile topics, is very impressed with acoustics of that place and the sound that is experienced there.